What is in each PDF
Every worksheet is a two-page PDF that prints in black and white on US Letter paper. Page 1 has 8 to 12 problems on one skill, easier ones first, with room for a name and date. Page 2 is the answer key. Free to print, no sign-up.
What 4th grade math covers
Fourth graders work with numbers up to a million, reading, comparing and rounding them to any place. They multiply up to four digits by one digit and two digits by two digits, divide multi-digit numbers by one digit, and learn what a remainder means. Factors, multiples, and prime and composite numbers appear here too, and these are the tools that make fraction work easier later.
Fractions take up a large part of the year. Children find equivalent fractions, compare fractions with different denominators, add and subtract fractions with the same denominator, and connect tenths and hundredths to decimals, so that 7/10 and 0.7 are understood to be the same number.
Measurement and geometry add angles, sorted into right, acute and obtuse, and converting larger units to smaller ones, such as yards to feet or kilometers to meters. Number patterns and multi-step word problems ask children to combine several of these skills at once and to choose the right operation for themselves.
Using these worksheets at home
- Give multi-digit problems room. Lined or graph paper keeps columns straight, and many mistakes in long multiplication are really mistakes of alignment.
- On word problems, have your child underline what the question asks and say the plan out loud before working. Multi-step problems usually go wrong in the plan, not the arithmetic.
- Ask for an estimate first. If 79 × 3 should be near 240, an answer of 2,137 stands out as wrong before anyone checks the key.
- Connect decimals to money. Tenths and hundredths make sense quickly when your child thinks of dimes and pennies.
Where children get stuck
- Lining up partial products. In two-digit multiplication the second row starts one place over, and children who skip that zero get a much smaller answer.
- Comparing fractions by looking only at the top or bottom. To compare 5/8 and 6/16, rewrite them with the same denominator first.
- Treating a decimal like a whole number. Children may think 0.62 is bigger than 0.7 because 62 is bigger than 7. Writing 0.7 as 0.70 clears this up.
- Unit conversions going the wrong way. Going to a smaller unit means you need more of them, so the number should grow. Ask whether the answer makes sense.